New Foto Tip by Mark Alberhasy - A Perspective on Lenses

Hi All,

I've just posted the latest Foto Tip by Mark Alberhasky on DIMi:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/fototips.php>

It is on lenses and I can heartily endorse Mark's great advice. Mark is
a Nikon Mentor in the US.

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography
http://www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Coordindinator of Studies, Multimedia and Photomedia, Australian Academy
of Design
Personal art site http://www.artinyourface.com/

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been saying the same thing for years!

MrT.

 

No you are not. But of course with newcomers migrating to dSLRs all the
time it does need to be said again and again. It see it with my incoming
students all the time. Their idea of a fast lens is f4 and a really fast
one f2.8. It is the zoom mentality. Now nothing wrong with zooms, I love
my ones, but they are not the whole answer.

Cheers,

Wayne

 

Not mentioned in Mark's article:
The need for a "fast" lens has become less pressing with today's DSLRs
providing for 4- stop ISO changes, e.g. from ISO 100 to 800, with virtually
no sharpness / noise penalties (and decent pictures even at 1600 or 3200),.
Get me right, I love to use my f1.4 prime lens and agree with the
"Cartier-Bresson" approach to learn to see through just one focal length. On
the other hand, Mark's "No more zoom in, zoom out. You've got to look for
the right subject and the right composition" is misleading. Any decent
photographer w/o a zoom will use his legs to get the right framing!
Cheers,
Hank

 

Well, maybe not quite that simple -- a) the refs get a bit
upset if I am out in the middle of the soccer field during
the game to "get the right framing" and b) many times,
I want a different perspective between the foreground
subject and the background (mountains etc) - it takes
a different focal length to get the perspective right too
(yes, you still need to use your legs to get it right though)

mikey

 

Yes, of course, there are a number of situations where the legs alone won't
do it.
Indoors, for instance, where a nasty wall may soon crowd one's effort to
step back-
Thanks for pointing out the importance of the foreground / background
perspective.
I use my Canon DSLR with 3 lenses (17-40 f4 Zoom, a 50 f1.4 Prime and a
70-200 f4 Zoom) and find that I take about 50% of my pictures with the 17-40
f4 lens, because I like its perspective on a 1.6 crop camera.
Cheers,
Hank

 

I have seen more people bitten with the foreground/background
thing. Out in the open country somewhere with a beautiful
mountain backdrop, they shoot the picture of someone from
up close with the wide angle then notice when they get home
the "magnificent mountain scenery" that was there when they
took the picture is just a couple of little bumps behind their
subject. Always the same comment "gee I don't understand,
the mountains looked so much bigger when we were there".
Step back even 10 feet, zoom in a bit to frame the subject
and voila - the mountains are there !! (unless you live in
Kansas, in which case, there is no hope for mountains .. )

mikey

 

When one wants to enhance the size of distant mountains, the condensed
perspective of a tele lens is certainly the way to go. My personal taste for
landscape images goes rather in the opposite, wide-angle direction, where
the foreground subject is emphazised and the feeling of depth enhanced.
Therefore my preference and reliance on the 17-40 f4 Zoom.
Here is an example of the kind of image I strive to emulate:
http://www.pbase.com/paskuk/image/65952350

Cheers,
Hank

 

Beautiful photos!

Tuli

 

I always thought they did that so that when they photographed their girlfriend
in front of the Eiffel Tower/Taj Mahal/Sydney Opera House/whatever, they would
be able to admire her without being distracted by that heap of junk in the
background!


James McNangle

 

The thing is, yes we all know this but many others don't. It is easy to
forget that new people are coming to photography all the time as a new
hobby, or moving up in their attention to it. Things like stepping back
and using a longer lens has to be learned. And even using the feet
instead of the zoom has to be learned.

It is not automatic, especially now that the standard lens sold with
effectively all cameras is a zoom. For beginners, zooms give the
impression you can stay in one spot and get a range of results, which
you can. But learning that this is not always what you want to do needs
to be taught. It is one of the many things we have to teach students.

Cheers,

Wayne

 

Yes; a very attractive picture. But the next picture (Fleetwith Heather) makes
me sad -- I didn't realise they had all that cotton wool polluting the water in
the Lakes District ;-) [I know a lot of people like that fuzzy water, but I
think it looks much better taken with a short exposure so that it is nice and
crisp.]

On a more serious vein, I feel that it should be possible to flip through a
photo album without having to re-centre the images on each page. After some
effort, I have managed to design a photo album which will (almost!) display
correctly on a 1024 by 768 screen with 810 by 540 pixel landscape photos and
400/450 by 600 portrait photos. See:
http://www.corybas.com/Albums/CanadaJapan04/Holiday 2004.htm

The pictures in the album you refer to are a fraction smaller, but the images
will not display correctly without re-centring on a screen less than about 900
pixels high.

On the other hand I do like the neutral grey back ground. Perhaps I should try
something similar in my albums.


James McNangle

 

Excellent pictures. Looks to me like you got it just
right - only thing missing was all the sheep that we
saw when we were over there about 20 years ago.
Seems like EVERYWHERE was sheep !! You are
right about the landscape images and the lens - what
I was thinking more of is when you want a picture
of the kids etc with Mt. Rainier or some such as
a major part of the picture instead of the little bump
in the corner of the picture.

mikey


mikey

 

I think quite a few comments in this thread are a bit missleading.... we
need to remember that perspective does NOT change with focal length.

Perspective will only change when we move our feet and change the subject
distance... this of course means that we will use a longer FL to frame the
subject as tight as being close with a shorter focal length, but the
important fact is that the persective only changed because we moved our
feet.

 

Meanwhile, I shoot with a 1.3 crop factor camera (1D Mark II) and I
have the opposite reaction. I have a 24-70 and a 70-200, and have
borrowed the 17-40. I ONLY used the 17-40 for fireworks photos. Each
time I put it on the camera thinking I'd try some wider views, I kept
finding myself on the 40 end and wishing I had more telephoto. I've
been using the 70-200 as my primary lens, and only reach for the 24-70
occasionally. The 17-40 is not on my shopping list but the 1.4
extender is.


jc

 

You mean like this if someone was in the frame:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3182796

Or with Mt Rainier even bigger?

Greg

 

Wow! How did they manage to levitate Mount Rainier?

Mount Rainier should definitely bigger, but the buildings are perfectly composed
in this photo, and to get the same effect with Mount Rainier bigger you would
have to move back to a more distant vantage point (after you had found a longer
telephoto), and my recollection is that the choice of vantage point offering
this view is strictly limited.


James McNangle

 

Of course, perspective is not a function of lens focal length. Perspective
is a function of the distance of objects from the lens. However, in common
language usage it is customary to speak in terms of perspective as wide
angle, normal, or telephoto perspective.

Ron Bigelow http://www.ronbigelow.com/ in his excellent tutorial
"Advanced Composition" (Part3) approaches this dilemma as follows:

"The first thing that needs to be done is to destroy a misconception about
perspective. Many people believe that perspective is a function of lens
focal length. This is incorrect. Rather, perspective is a function of the
distance of objects from the lens. However, it is easy to see how this
misconception comes about. When wide angle lenses are used, the foreground
objects are typically placed close to the lens and the background objects
are relatively far away. This creates one perspective. When telephoto lenses
are used, typically, both the foreground and background objects are fairly
far away from the lens. This creates a different perspective. So, it appears
that the two lenses create different perspectives. In reality, this is not
the case -- it is not the lenses that create the different perspectives; it
is how the photographer uses those lenses to change the relative distances
of the foreground and background objects with respect to the lens.

However, in real life, wide angle lenses are used in certain ways, and long
lenses are generally used in different ways. Thus, it is often easier to
think in terms of perspective as wide angle, normal, or telephoto
perspective. Therefore, for the purpose of ease of explanation and
understanding, the rest of this section will cover the topic as if
perspective was a function of lens focal length. In spite of this, those of
us in the know understand that perspective is really a function, not of
focal length, but of how we use that focal length."

 

Most of this discussion has centred on pictures with two subjects -- girlfriend
and Taj Mahal for example, and in these the relative perspective will certainly
change with focal length. The serious photographer will usually use people only
to indicate the scale of the scene, so he will step back until the people look
suitably small, then he will adjust the focal length to compose his picture. If
there is only a single person in the picture it is generally better to have them
looking at the scene, rather than the camera. For an example of this type of
photo see http://www.corybas.com/Albums/Heli_04/Heli_21.htm. (There are number
of other examples of people used as portable foreground in this album.)

On the other hand the Japanese photographer will invariably stand his girlfriend
in front of the scenery, looking at him, and will take the photo from fairly
close so that the scenery doesn't distract from her. My wife complains that I
use her as 'portable foreground', and only photograph her back, so each trip I
pretend I am Japanese, and take one or two portraits of her with the scenery as
a backdrop. See, for example
http://www.corybas.com/Albums/CanadaJapan04/CJ_02.htm.


James McNangle

 

Nice pix from the Queen Ann area. That is the idea,
but I was thinking more along the lines of when we
are down there - there are times it is really nice to
bring the mountain right in tight. Then there are other
times as people have pointed out where the wide angle
is best. Took me a while to realize the most useless
lens for me to buy with a 35mm was the normal 58mm
lens - it was either not long enough to bring in what I
wanted or it was not wide enough for the scenery pix
I was taking (I used a 28 and 35mm a lot with film).
Yours is a good example of bringing the mountain
into the view though.

I guess the point I started out trying to make was as
someone else pointed out - there is no "correct" one,
it is a case of recognizing what the effects of different
lenses and relative distances between the foreground
subject and background and how they interact.

mikey


mikey